Cognition and Emotion in Autonomous Cars

In order to increase the acceptance of vehicles that drive (partly) autonomously, it seems advantageous that the driving style of autonomous cars is human-like. Furthermore, the acceptance of autonomous cars is believed to be increased when their actions and current state becomes more transparent to the passengers. These aspects can be tackled by implementing emotions to an autonomous car which allows a situation specific adaption of driving functions and vehicle dynamics. In this work, the emotions are modeled by the cognitive appraisal model as described by Ortony, Clore and Collins. The approach is presented for a traffic scene where two lanes are merged into one.